Birds
by the flying yolei society
Summary: Matt experiments some therapeutic fun


Every Thursday afternoon, I leave Mr Ikari's maths class and head for the parking lot, where I climb into my old beat-up car. I put the music at full blast, and I head for the white stucco building ten minutes away. I park in front of the door, a little bell, attached to the door by a red string, rings when I open it. The receptionist gazes from her stack of papers. 'She's waiting for you' she says.

+++

I push the door open; the glass feels cold under my fingers. "Hi!" Rebekah says, and she smiles, a bright happy smile, her lipstick a shade too dark. I don't answer, I crash on the moth-torn couch instead, it's a dark green color, cigarette burns everywhere on the velvety fabric.I wonder who sat here before me.

I let my eyes wander around the tiny room; the walls are covered with posters, cheery flowers and smiley faces, happy children and cute kittens in wicker baskets. "When God closes a door, He opens a window" on a pink plastic canvas, a tiny house with a gravel alleyway and flower baskets under each window is stitched under the saying, probably by a young child, you can see by how irregular each stitch is.

-"Soooo..." she says, and I know she expects me to answer. I don't though; it's not worth it. I hear the birds signing by the outside window; I wish I could join them (Outside... singing... free) 

I pass my fingers on the cigarette burns, where the velvet and the interlining melt in a plasticky puddle. She allows smoking in the tiny white room, she opens a window so the small doesn't linger for too long, but somehow a faint odor of cigarette always remains on her clothes, the scent of a lover, maybe.

The thought of Rebekah having a lover seems funny to me. She's always busy, always on a run, in between patients, her desk covered with a pile-up of files, mine carefully set at the top, open. 

-"Do you want to talk?" she asks, and I nod 'no' I don't want to.

+++

At first, I never talked. I kept my eyes on the ticking Coca-Cola coke above her desk. She laughed, and said she had put it there for a reason. 

Then, I started to talk. Snippets from my childhood I thought she might like, psychologists always like when you talk about your childhood. I told her about my fist bike, about the snow that always fell in an Odaiba winter... about TK.

-"Were you jealous?" she asked.

-"No."

-"You were three, Matt. It's perfectly normal to be jealous of a new sibling at this age."

-"I wasn't," I say, and she looks at me in disbelief. "My parents were arguing a lot."

-"Yeah, and so?"

-"I think they thought TK was a last chance. That's what my father said, 'One last try, Nancy'. I put all my hope in him. I hoped he'd bring my parents back together, you know... And he didn't."

-"How did you feel?" 

-"Betrayed."

+++

Then, I started to talk about more recent things, shocking things that I thought she might like also, my band, high school, and how Jun was stalking me (This poor girl really hasn't a clue) Tai, and the practically non-existent relationship I have with him. 

-"We used to be so close." I say, bitterness tainting my voice. Rebekah gazed up from the file on her desk, and nodded, go on, her eyes said. "I loved him, I think I did."

-"You think?" 

-"I'm never sure of anything. Too complicated. It might be one thing in the morning, and a whole different thing at night." I tried to explain to her, but she didn't understand, I saw it in her eyes. "It's easier to say you're not sure because then you can change your mind."

-"Ah." she said. "What happened?"

-"We grew apart." I said, and she nodded. (I understand.) "I used to stay up late at night and write haikus to him, silly things about love and butterflies, and the way his eyes sparkled when he smiled. He never returned the favour."

-"You left him because of haikus?"

I ignored her. "I went to every soccer game of his, I never missed one. He never did anything. He never went to band practice, he didn't come at my father's funeral, he said it was too painful, he never did anything. I kept the relationship going on my own, I was too blind to notice it had ended long ago."

+++

I stare at the clock, Rebekah is doing paperwork, I hear the faint sound of sheets moving around, the hour is almost over. The birds have grown still, or maybe they have switched to another tree, thinking the parking lot too close, too noisy. I like to think they're still here, and they are just waiting for me for the concert. 

-"It's over." Rebekah says, and I turn the doorknob, stopping in midtrack to wave at her. I walk down the desk of the receptionist, down the waiting room, and I hope the birds are still waiting for me. 

_Digimon, its characters and all related likenesses are __©__ Toei 1997, it says so on my box of action figures. ^^;_


End file.
